Ad Astra Per Aspera Redux
by Bladequeen2000
Summary: "To the stars through difficulty". See original version for details for now. Basically a fixed version of the original where some details were rectified. A story seen through the perspectives of Graeme, Paul and Tara. Read and review please!
1. The Salvage Mission

**(So, I ended up redoing this story because I noticed there were certain details I had gotten mixed up. Hopefully, I have everything right this time around. For those of you that have read the original version, you'll probably notice some changes in later chapters. I'll start by re-uploading this one as it was just to get the ball rolling. I'll have the next chapter up in a week or so and hopefully I can get some momentum going with that unlike last time... I hope you enjoy this!)**

 **Chapter 1: The Salvage Mission  
**

 _-Paul-_

Space travel isn't exactly what it's cracked up to be, not to me at least. Sure the destinations in mind and perhaps even the sights along the way might be pretty awesome, but I'm always bored with the actual traveling from point A to point B part. Unless you're moving through a nebula, an asteroid field or passing through a star system, there really isn't much to see. A known fact about me: I tend to get bored easily. I mean, yeah, people consider me a slacker because I'm not ambitious, but I can't stand just sitting around and doing nothing.

I have to be doing something, even if it's something like lightin' one up and kicking back for a bit. At least _that's_ something. I could've gone for one of those... I was stuck on a two-man craft on a salvage mission heading into what my people refer to as the Delta Quadrant. It's just a labeling system we use to keep track of different sections of our galaxy, nothing too complicated.

Anyway, I lucked-out on my co-pilot, Del, an old friend of mine who apparently liked to bust my balls about getting marooned on Earth. It's cool though, he and I go waaaay back, since we were kids. There was a time where we hadn't seen each other for few millennia due to our differences in career paths. He wanted to go for Piloting or Engineering or something like that and I just took whatever I could get. It's kind of weird that he didn't really talk about what he used to do while we were separated or how he came to be available to chauffeur my ass around the cosmos whenever I needed him to. Whatever. If it was important, he'd have said something.

Yeah, due to the whole 'Earth incident', I'd been placed on a probationary period where I have to have a co-pilot if I'm traveling outside our star system. This way, I didn't have to worry about getting marooned again. I didn't mind having Del around as a co-pilot, even if he did like to break balls. The only thing that bothered me about my probationary period, is that they didn't give me a straight answer as to when it'd be lifted. They could've just told me it was indefinite, but whatever...

Some flashing on Del's side of the piloting consul distracted my stare at the blackness of space. He scratched at his black goatee and pressed a few buttons until the flashing stopped. He leaned back in his seat and glanced over at me.

"We're gettin' close." He pointed out. I taught him and a few others English when I returned home with Tara and I guess they taught people they knew because after almost seven years, the language spread like wildfire across my planet. We still speak our native language of course, but me and Del tend to end up speaking to each other in English, especially around Tara. She's doing fine by the way. She seemed to love it on my planet, which made me happy knowing I could at least keep a promise to _somebody_.

"If this is a salvage mission, shouldn't there be, I don't know, _more crew-members_?" I asked, the fact that it was just Del and me starting to bother me.

Del shook his head, his eyes forward as we weaved our way through an asteroid belt in some distant star system. "It's just salvaging data from a crashed ship's computer. Don't need more than two people for the job."

"Right." I pulled my hands out from behind my head and rested them on my stomach. "Where exactly is this crashed ship in the Delta Quadrant system?"

"Outer planet. Ice dwarf. Seventh one out from the star."

"How the fuck did they manage to crash there?" I wondered out loud, a small smirk on my face. At least I wasn't the only one crashing shit.

Del shrugged. "Coulda been a malfunction. We'll find out when we find the ship." He smirked at me. "Like you can fuckin' talk."

"Hey, at least _I_ crashed on a planet with a fucking atmosphere and enough gravity to actually pull me in." I countered, moving my legs off the consul where they were resting and sitting up a little.

"Yeah, yeah." Del looked forward again and his smirk faded. "Head's up."

I looked ahead at the small planet we were approaching, its surface reflecting a dull gray color due to the distance from its star. At first, I couldn't see anything to indicate a crash site, but as we got closer I could start to see the glinting of the ship's hull on the northern hemisphere of the planet. Even closer and then...

"Fuck..." I practically gasped.

" _Damn_!" Del exclaimed. The wreck was that bad. The disc-shaped craft looked like it had literally been ripped in half, most of its interior spilled out over the surface of the small planet. I'd estimate the impact crater at a depth of about maybe twenty to twenty-five feet and an impact distance of a couple miles at the most. The debris from the ship covered at least a five to ten mile radius from the crash-site.

At our current distance, I couldn't make out any bodies, which I was thankful about. Suddenly, I felt like a dick about what I had said earlier... I couldn't see any landmass that would've fucked the craft up like that on the way down. It could've been destroyed from the impact, but something about the extent of the damage and how tense Del got as he stood up and retrieved his air compression helmet from a compartment under his seat told me that there was more to this situation than what we were told. Ever since Earth, I hated bullshit like that.

"A _malfunction_ did that?" I asked, incredulously as I stood up and retrieved my own air compression helmet.

"It's possible, but..." He trailed off, grabbing a pair of black gloves from inside his helmet. As he pulled them on, I saw his brow furrow and his forehead start to crease. Something about this mission really bothered him. Normally, whatever bothered Del, disturbed me. I looked out at the wreck again and felt my stomach drop a little.

"Yeah, I know..." I started as I pulled on my black gloves and pulled out these little black cuffs from a pocket on my left thigh. "There's something those assholes aren't telling us about this mission."

Del grunted in agreement and pulled a similar pair of cuffs on over the crease between his gloves and the cuffs on his moss-green colored suit. He pressed a button on them and the material tightened to conform to the curves of his sleeve-cuffs and wrists. I did the same for mine. This was to prevent any air or heat from escaping our suits while we were outside the ship, considering this planet didn't have an atmosphere. They felt tight around my wrists, but they weren't constricting.

Del went over to the side and opened a panel under the consul, taking out a couple silver toolboxes. He set them down in his pilot seat and picked up his helmet, the color matching his suit. My helmet also matched the color of my suit, khaki. It's kind of an odd coincidence that khaki sort of became my unofficial color after Earth, but I didn't mind. People still called me Paul after Earth too.

Man did that nickname stick...

"Whatever it is," Del began, pulling on his helmet, "we're gonna find out soon enough."

"Yeah..." That's what I was worried about. Whatever you learn, you can't unlearn... I pulled my own helmet on and we both pressed a button on the left side that allowed the material hanging around our necks to conform to our suits in the same way that the black cuffs conformed to our wrists and for the same reasons. This also activated an internal computer within the helmet that linked to the ship's computer. This way we could keep track of our positions in relation to the ship at all times and reroute any communication with the ship directly to one of us.

The pitch black visors also allowed us to see in several different fields of vision when we needed them, such as night-vision, infrared, ultraviolet, and so on.(Technology's pretty fuckin' awesome, isn't it?) A kind of mechanical whirr sounded inside my helmet before Del's voice rang in my ears.

"Comm. check."

"Yeah, I can hear you."

"You too." He went up to the consul and pressed a few buttons. After a few seconds, a loud sucking sound filled the cockpit as the air was sucked out of the ship to equalize the pressure. (The pun was completely unintentional there, by the way... ) If he had activated the landing gear and opened the ship otherwise, we both would've been pulled into space and thrown who knows where. Once everything was silent again, he activated the landing gear and the ship dropped down to the planet's surface.

Del was the first to head out, taking both toolboxes with him and I followed close behind. We had to switch to night-vision in order to see anything. The light from the nearby star was too far away to provide anything even remotely sufficient for us to see. Up close, the wreck looked even worse. It looked almost as if it had been turned inside-out and considering the extent of the damage, it was hard to tell that this craft was once disc-shaped at all.

One half of it looked like a jagged crescent-shape where on the far end, you could kind of make out the cockpit or what was left of it at least. The other slightly discernible half, that was turned up at a ninety-degree angle, looked like somebody took a hard-shell taco, placed it face-down on the ground and then stomped on it. That's really the best way I could describe it... I really didn't think we were recovering anything from this and there was no way anybody was surviving a crash this bad. So, where the fuck were the bodies?

Before I was a little disturbed, now I was completely creeped the fuck out. The dead silence of space wasn't helping either... Even as we climbed over the scorched debris, I didn't see a single shred of evidence that anyone had even been on this ship. It was as if it crashed on its own without a pilot or anything... When we approached the remains of the cockpit, Del set down the toolboxes and started prying the panel off of the consul.

"Dude... what the fuck happened?" I asked. If I had known then that this would be the last time I'd see anything other than the inside of an enemy space-station, that I'd be a prisoner for the second time in my life, I'd have dragged Del's ass back to our ship and gotten the fuck outta there right then. Fuckin' hindsight... Del shook his head and then looked at the pilot's seat that was twisted to its side. He straightened to get a better look at it.

"Whatever it was, it was no fucking accident. Check this shit out." He touched a gloved hand to the seat and I moved closer to see what he was talking about. I saw what looked like three claw-marks tearing through the material of the seat. As I looked around, I could see more claw-marks on the floor around the seat too. The pattern of the marks was vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't pinpoint why at the time. He was right though, this wasn't an accident.

They had been attacked by someone and there weren't any bodies because whoever it was took prisoners. We had to leave. We had to get the fuck out of there. My people haven't had any enemies for thousands of years and I sure as hell didn't have a clue about warfare...

"Oh, shit..." I breathed.

"'Oh, shit' is right." A warning flashed on our visors, coming from our ship's computer. Another ship was heading for us. No, wait, it was already there and our computer couldn't identify its affiliation. We backed away from the wreck. Anything our ship couldn't identify couldn't be good...

"Fuck the data! I didn't sign up for this shit!" I shouted.

"Me neither! We're gettin' the fuck outta here!" Del agreed and we both ran toward our ship, leaving the toolboxes behind. We didn't make it in time... At that point, a black triangular-shaped craft with red lights at its points cruised overhead, stopping to hover above our ship. We stopped and stepped back as it tilted until its nose was pointed directly at our ship and then the lights became brighter. Two streaks of light shot along the sides of the craft to converge at the nose, causing a beam of energy to blast our ship to pieces.

We had managed to leap for cover behind some of the debris from the other wreck, but the shock wave from the explosion hit us like a fuckin' semi. Things became hazy after that. I remember blacking out for a few seconds and wondering if Del had survived. I remember feeling myself being lifted and dragged somewhere and feeling too sore and disoriented to fight back. Not that I'd have anyway to escape even if I could've fought back...

But the thing I remember the most was the last thing I thought of before I blacked out completely. I thought of Tara... She was smiling at me. She was always smiling at me. I doubt she'd be smiling right now, though...

 **(Disclaimer: I do not own Paul or any characters created by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I do, however, own Del. Let me know what you think of this so far!)**


	2. Old Enemies, New Nightmares

**Chapter 2: Old Enemies and New Nightmares  
**

 _-Paul-_

Waking up with a migraine just fucking sucks, period. When I came to, I immediately grasped my head with both hands, groaning. At first I thought I was just hungover from last night and had passed out on the floor, but then the memories started coming back to me. The mission, the wrecked ship, the black craft, the explosion, all of it. My eyes snapped open, but wherever I was, it was so dark that I couldn't see shit.

I could feel cool metal beneath me and the place smelled like hot lead and grease. It wasn't helping my migraine at all... I felt dizzy and nauseated as I sat up, trying not to focus on how sore I was. I started to check myself for injuries, but I noticed that whoever put me here, left my suit on. Wait, they stole my gloves and once my eyes started to adjust to the darkness, I noticed that they tore off my sleeves from the elbow down.

They also ripped off all my pockets and took my helmet too. Fuck... That means these assholes had my weed... Awesome. I only hoped Del was better off than me at this point.

Oh, shit, Del!

"Del?" I called out, wincing when my voice bounced off the walls and back into my eardrums, making my head throb. I heard some movement and called him again a little quieter so I wouldn't puke. I heard a groan to my right and I crawled toward it until I found a wall. I was still dizzy and I wasn't going to try standing just yet. From what little I could see, I was in some kind of cell with dark colored walls.

In the corners was this dim, green glow that was the only source of light in this room. I couldn't make out where the door or entrance was, but I could faintly see what looked like a small, arched window with these pinhead sized holes in the surface. It was set into the wall I was leaning against and I could see Del's silhouette moving on the other side. I watched him sit up and hold his head in his hands, grunting in pain.

"Del." I tried to get his attention. He looked around, apparently a little disoriented.

"Paul?" His voice sounded a little raspier than usual.

"Over here." I watched him turn around to look in my direction before crawling over to the window until he was adjacent to me. He sat down with his back to the wall and turned his head a little to talk to me.

"Ugh, where are we?" He asked.

"The fuck if I know..." I replied, "You okay?"

"I'm alright." He looked over himself to make sure. "My shit's all fucked up, but I'm fine. You?"

"I'm okay..." I sat back against the wall adjacent to Del. It didn't seem like we were going anywhere anytime soon anyways...

"You see anyway out?" He asked, in his tone I could tell he was expecting a 'no'. I let my eyes scan the room anyway. In fact, other than the little window, I couldn't see any sort of ventilation either.

"No... do you?" I already knew the answer before he said it.

"Nah..." Didn't think so. I sighed and swore out loud. This was bullshit. When we find a way to get out of here, those fuck-nuts back home were getting way more than just a piece of my mind. If you're gonna send people on a mission, it'd be nice to tell them about some of the risks they might encounter like, oh, cruising into what could possibly be hostile territory.

That's just me though... Whatever. No point dwelling on it right now. I could cross that fucked up bridge when I get to it. For now, I had to focus on figuring out who these dicks were and why they fucking blew up two of my people's ships.

We sat in silence for a while, trying to figure out what the fuck we were gonna do until a mechanized sound echoed through the room and a light filtered through the other arched window across my cell. The light cast two shadows across the floor in the other cell: one was tall, probably about the average height of a human, and the other I could barely see it was so small. I could hear a mixture of two voices, one high pitched and the other like a high-tenor. It sounded like they were arguing, and the taller shadow moved as if throwing something, or maybe someone, inside the other cell. I saw a small body land unceremoniously in front of the small window and I tensed a little.

It was a little kid and not just any little kid, but one of my people! He was at least half my height and he immediately got up and ran for the cell door as it shut closed, locking him in. I crawled over to the other side of my cell to lean against the wall there and I saw him pounding his little fists against the door.

" _You're going to kill someone!_ " He screamed in our native language. With his high-pitched voice and our native dialect, it made him sound like a frantic cricket. I rubbed at my temples, trying to ease my throbbing head again. He seemed to give up and just sit with his back to the door, looking depressed about something. At that point, I was wondering how the fuck they managed to snatch a kid.

Back home, kids can't even leave the planet unless they've achieved adult status. It's mostly for safety reasons and this fucked up situation could well be one of them. I briefly wondered if maybe this kid was a survivor of that wreck in the Delta Quadrant...

" _Hey, kid. Over here._ " I called to him in our native language. He looked over at me and seemed taken aback, as if he expected to be here by himself. I waved him over and he stood up to walk toward me. Judging by his size, he couldn't have been older than twelve. He wore a grey one-piece suit that looked similar to mine and Del's except it didn't have pockets and gloves, but he was wearing black boots.

" _Did they take you too?_ " He asked as he knelt down in front of the window.

" _Yeah... Me and my friend over there._ " I motioned to Del on the other side, who was squinting to try to see this kid and looked just as surprised and confused as I was. " _You weren't on that ship that crashed in the Delta Quadrant, were you?_ "

I doubted that he could be, but to my surprise again, he nodded.

" _Me and about five other people. We were on our way to Station 587 when we were intercepted by these guys._ " He tilted his head toward the door of his cell to indicate whoever threw him in there. " _They boarded our ship and killed the pilot. Then they forced us onto their ship and shot our ship's reactor core._ "

Okay, that did explain a lot, there's still the question of how this kid got way out here and who the fuck 'these guys' were.

" _So, how are you off-world right now?_ " I asked.

" _I achieved adult status recently. I was out on a paid internship and if we got to Station 587, the engineers there would've had me work on the ships that docked there to learn the trade._ " He replied, shifting to sit on his legs.

" _Niiiice._ " Only twelve-ish and the kid already had things figured out. Kinda had to respect that.

" _How did they get you two?_ " He asked.

" _We were sent to salvage whatever data was left on your ship. The fuckers must've been waiting for someone else to come by._ " I reasoned. Another known fact about me: I'm not the most tactful person, not even around kids. Whatever, according to our people's records, he was an adult now. He could deal with it.

" _Oh... I'm sorry._ " He looked down.

" _It's not your fault._ " I reassured him. I looked over at Del, who was still listening to us, and then back at the kid.

" _Who exactly are these guys?_ " I asked. If I lived another 500,000 years, I'd never forget this moment right here. The kid blinked and tilted his head as if the answer was obvious.

" _You didn't see them?_ " He asked a bit incredulously.

" _No, why?_ "

"T _his is going to sound impossible... They're the last of the Ulara._ " He didn't expect us to believe him and he was right to think that way.

" _'Last of the Ulara'? The Ulara went extinct like half a million years ago. There is no 'last of the Ulara'._ " I argued. There was just no way it was them. The Ulara were the last race my people ever fought against before we swore to peace.

I don't really remember exactly what happened. I just know that we did something that wiped them all out. It wasn't really intentional though...

" _That's what I thought too until they seized my transport and made me work for them._ " He countered, " _I know it's them. I learned about them when I was studying our history. I can recognize Ularan technology when I see it and I know an Ularan when I see one. Plus, they'll tell anyone who'll listen that they're the only surviving members of their species and that they plan on expanding._ "

" _Oh, c'mon! That doesn't prove anything! Some of the Ularan technology did survive the war and there's more than enough information about them floating around the cosmos._ " Yeah, I'm also known to be stubborn about things I don't readily believe. The Ularans surviving the war is just one of those things.

" _Are you actually suggesting that these guys are just_ pretending _to be Ularan?_ " He asked, giving me the same look I used to give people on Earth when I argued the existence of their God. This made Del chuckle. Of course he would find me arguing with a kid funny at a time like this...

" _It has the advantage of being_ actually possible _, even_ likely _. An extinct species doesn't just show up out of nowhere after 500,000 years and start kidnapping people._ " I retorted.

" _You'll know when you see them._ " He said, his voice lowering. " _No one else could possibly use their exo-suits._ "

He obviously didn't want to argue this any further and he did grab my attention at that point.

" _He has a point there_." Del said, finally joining the conversation. " _Their exo-suits were bio-genetically programmed to both activate and function when in contact with Ularan DNA._ Only _Ularan DNA._ "

It was to prevent anyone else from being able to use their technology. I remembered that the suits made them look intimidating and allowed them to survive in practically any environment. So far, no other technology could match it, that we knew of. It was like a second skin for them and part of the reason why the technology died with them. Or so I thought...

" _You saw them in their exo-suits?_ " I asked, now a little less dismissive.

The kid nodded. " _I saw them without the suits too. There's no mistaking them. They're Ularan._ "

I paused, not really knowing what to think. " _How is that possible? If they are Ularan, how did they survive?_ "

" _Why don't you ask them yourself? I'm sure they'd be eager to tell you..._ " He moved to sit with his side against the wall, his back facing the door. We all fell silent after that, none of us wanting to talk about the Ulara anymore. Well, _I_ didn't at least. If we really were prisoners of the Ulara, we were so fucked...

" _What's your name, kid?_ " I asked, wanting a different topic.

" _Asxtuathoael._ _.._ "

I nodded a bit. " _Do you mind if I call you Ash?_ "

" _Knock yourself out_ _._ " He turned to put his back against the wall.

" _I'm Paul and this is Del._ " I introduced. Del waved a little at his introduction and Ash waved back with a little smirk on his face.

" _'Paul'?_ " Ash inquired, raising a brow.

" _It's a nickname a friend gave me. It's also a long fucking story..._ " I explained.

" _Okay... Nice to meet you._ "

" _You too._ " Del chimed. It became silent again for a while. We all just seemed content with just staring at the floor until Del switched back to English.

"You're thinking about them, aren't you?" He asked. He didn't mean the Ulara. He meant the girls I left behind back home. I always called them 'the girls', sometimes 'my girls'.

Tara and our daughter, Lilith...

Yeah I actually have a kid now. Did I forget to mention that? She wasn't planned or anything, (big surprise there, I know) but I'd be lying if I said I regretted it happening. It has its ups and downs, sure, but for the most part, having a kid is actually pretty nice. It's also indescribable, as cliche as that sounds.

"Yeah... This is the second time I just disappear on her. Now I do it to Lil' too. What am I supposed to say to them when we get back?" Yes, _when_ we get back. I had to believe we were getting out of here at some point. I had to or we'd never leave...

"You'll figure it out when the time comes." Del tried to reassure me. "I know I've said this before, man, but you got it _bad._ "

He's said it twice before. Once around the time he first met Tara when I brought her home with me and the second time when Lil' was three years old and we were just hanging out. It was his way of expressing how much it was obvious that I cared for them. I just smirked at that.

"Yeah, I know." I said, the smirk faded and I repeated it a little more somberly.

"I know..."

 **(Disclaimer: I don't own Paul or any characters created by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but I do own Del, Ash and Lilith. Read &Review please!) **


	3. Broadcasts and Warning Signs

**Chapter 3: Broadcasts and Warning Signs  
**

 _-Tara-_

If there's one thing I know for sure and without any doubts, is that life is never certain. It's as if we're floating on open sea, surrounded by fog with no clear view of the horizon. Sometimes we drift into storms and other times we wash up onto paradise. It's different for everybody and my paradise in particular had always been outlined in rocky shoals. Difficult and even dangerous to get to, but the journey was well worth the destination.

Here, with Paul, I had everything I needed, everything I was missing in my former life on Earth. I had a place I could truly call home. I had friends and even a family; it really was everything I'd imagine my paradise to be like. Yet, in the midst of my happiness, the universe had another harsh lesson to teach me. No matter how beautiful a paradise may look, the sun still has to set at least once.

I just never thought the night would be this dark...

It came in the form of a message given to me in person by a trusted friend. It was a beautiful sunny day, quite a contrast to what it had in store for me and my daughter, Lilith. We were both outside, taking advantage of the weather. Paul had left a few days ago on a small salvage mission. I knew his friend Del was with him, so despite what had happened to him the last time he left the planet for a mission, I wasn't worried.

Fate would soon prove me wrong...

A friend of ours had agreed to check in on us while Paul was away. Since I was never able to pronounce his real name, we just called him Dave. I spotted him walking toward us, dressed warmly since it was autumn and we lived in a temperate region on Paul's home planet. I waved him over, but even as he walked up to me, I could tell in his demeanor that something was wrong. There was a certain kind of guilt and hesitation in his eyes, a look I would learn was only given when someone had to give bad news.

"Hello, Dave!" I greeted nonetheless. A part of me just wanted to believe that maybe he was just having a bad day.

"Hey, Tara..." I could even hear it in his voice, though I could tell he was trying to hide it.

"Dave!" Lilith came over to greet him, a sweet little smile on her face.

"Hey there, Lil'. How're you doing, kid?" Dave asked as he returned the hug she gave him. She was almost as tall as he was at the time.

"Good! I wanna show you this new trick I learned!" She exclaimed as she let him go.

"I'd love to see it, but first I have to talk to Tara about something. You can show me right after, okay?"

"Okay!" With that, I told her to play a little ways away from us so we could talk. She went back to where she had been playing and I turned back to look at Dave.

"Is everything alright?" I asked and he took my hand.

"We should talk about this inside the house." He suggested, glancing at Lilith then back at me. Whatever he wanted to talk about, he didn't want her to overhear. It was then I knew that it had something to do with Paul. I nodded to agree with him.

"Okay." I turned to walk back into the house, looking toward Lilith, "Lilith, you stay right there where I can see you through the window. I'll be right back."

"Okay." She answered, burying herself in dried leaves. Once we were inside, I took a seat in a chair facing the door some several feet away. Dave chose to remain standing across from me, appearing more guilt-ridden than before no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"You can tell already, huh? So, I guess I'll just get right to the point..." He removed his black cap and looked at me, "We lost contact with Paul and Del's ship... we can't locate it either."

I felt confused and a little scared. "What do you mean? Are they marooned somewhere?"

"We don't know." He started to explain, "We're not getting any signals from the ship and we haven't received any responses to any of our attempts to communicate with them. We know they were heading to an ice dwarf planet in the Delta Quadrant, but we're really not entirely sure that they even made it there."

"But they're going to look for them, right? They're going to find them?" I was hopeful. I had to be. Inside, I knew what he was telling me and what it all meant, but I felt so scared.

I knew the answer when he looked down for a moment and twisted his cap in his hands, as if the knowledge of what happened was hurting him too...

"Believe me, Tara, as much as I really want to... as much as they _should_ want to... they're not going to send anyone after them until they know for sure where they ended up."

"What?" I didn't want to believe this. They were out there stranded, in need of help, but it wasn't coming. What if they were injured? What if they were trapped on some hostile planet?

"As of right now, we have no idea where they are. They said that it's too much of a liability to send someone after them without knowing their exact location. They could be anywhere..." Dave's expression turned bitter at that and I could only look at the floor, "Unless Paul or Del could somehow contact us and give us their exact location, no one is going to look for them..."

This all seemed preposterous and I couldn't accept it. How could they just leave them out there like that? They wouldn't even bother to investigate it...

"Is that the reason why it took so long for him to return here from Earth?" I asked. When he was marooned there, I don't think anyone looked for him then either.

Dave simply nodded his head and took my hand in his to comfort me. "I'm really sorry, Tara..."

I couldn't say anything. I squeezed his hand a little as I felt the tears coming. What was I going to do? What about Lilith? Lord only knows how long it was going to be until Paul or Del contacted them.

For all I knew, they were both... I couldn't even finish the thought. It didn't seem fair. I waited sixty years for him, he went through all that turmoil on Earth and now this. I felt a sob shake my body and the tears fall to the floor.

"Tara, I promise, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to find them." Dave tried to console me, but this was all too much. A memory flashed through my mind for a brief moment, the night Paul healed Graeme's bullet wound. Seeing Paul laying there with his eyes glazed over and so still, it made me feel so helpless because there was nothing I could do for him. It was how I felt now.

Helpless... and scared...

"You do that," I choked out through sobs, "and Dave... don't you ever give up on them, understand?"

I looked up at him, his hands on my shoulders, and he nodded.

"You know I won't." He put his arms around me and stroked my head, "It's gonna be okay, Tara..."

I knew it was, no matter how scared or devastated I felt, I knew things would turn out okay. I knew because I knew he'd come back. Paul would come back just like before. Somehow, I knew he would find a way. It would take a while and I would need to be patient, but I believed in him.

Things were different than they were before. He had Del with him too, which gave me even more confidence that he'd make it back to me, to us. For now, I would just have to wait. I owed him that for everything he'd done for me. I could wait.

For the second time, it was all I could do for him...

* * *

 _-Graeme-_

 _"...Phil, I am standing just a few blocks away from the scene where witnesses and officials reported seeing black triangles hovering just a few thousand feet above the White House..."_

 _-TSSHHT-_

 _"...the black triangles, seen in threes hovering over Manhattan, were also reported flying over every major city in the US. We've just received reports that these strange crafts have also been spotted over major cities in several countries all over the world..."_

 _-TSSHHT-  
_

 _"...military planes have tried to make contact with the triangular crafts and have thus far been unsuccessful, the planes mysteriously losing power within five-hundred yards and falling straight down to the ground..."_

 _-TSSHHT-  
_

 _"The Black Triangles, are they an elaborate hoax or are they proof that we are truly not alone in the universe?"  
_

 _-TSSHHT-  
_

 _"...I think they're here to study us, to observe our behavior and learn how we've evolved from just simple hunters and gatherers to the society we are today..."  
_

 _-TSSHHT-  
_

 _"We all need to open our eyes to the truth! These are secret government aircrafts that they've been working on since the 1960s designed to keep our enemies at bay!"_

 _-TSSHHT-  
_

The news reports had been like that all morning, nearly every channel was talking about it. These black, triangular crafts were hovering over every major city and capitol worldwide. To be honest, I felt a little excited about it. Our entire lives, Clive and I had always believed that there was intelligent life out there in the vast cosmos and that belief seemed proven to us when we met Paul. With the appearance of these strange crafts, it seemed the rest of the world would know for certain that we weren't alone in the universe and Clive shared my enthusiasm. Zoil, however, was bit more hesitant considering their coordinated positions over every major city. The former American Government agent and his wife, Karen, had been traveling with us as our security detail ever since Clive's book _Paul_ became so popular and we kept getting invites to Science Fiction themed conventions all over the country and the US. I'd add that the two of them ran the security team very well, as they both were trained not to trust what they saw on sight, but their experiences also taught them to keep an open mind to things, yet this situation kept them on edge as they were constantly checking positions and radioing one another as if expecting things to go bad.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said a part of me wasn't at least a little scared or disturbed by this. All of those science-fiction films and stories had certainly taught me that it was justifiably logical to be frightened, but what could be called my better instincts at the time were being overshadowed by the idea that mankind, not just government officials, would be making contact with a higher intelligence for the first time in human history. There's so much that we could learn from them and that knowledge could potentially boost humanity's progress forward by centuries. What logical person wouldn't be thrilled by that concept? According to the news reports, the triangular crafts hadn't done anything in the past few hours except hover in place over cities, so the chance that they could be hostile wasn't exactly a recurring thought in my mind.

I couldn't have been more wrong in that line of thinking... It turns out, they were just biding their time, waiting for the right moment to strike. It was close to 1:30 in the afternoon when the news started to report the first signs of movement from the unidentified crafts. With the cameras trained on them, the entire world watched as they all turned to face each other, the front tips tilting downward. We watched, foolishly curious, as the tips on the sides began to glow a red light, a red beam tracing its way up the sides of each craft until it reached the front.

Then, the beams shot out and collided with one another, creating a large red ball of energy until it shot down to the ground in a single blast three times the size of the original beams. When it touched the ground, the cameras only captured a flash of red before the screens cut out. We all swore in shock and disbelief and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Zoil burst into our hotel room, looking a bit pale. It didn't help to calm my nerves any, but then just about nothing would at this point.

"We need to move now! Let's go!" He urged me and Clive, but we hesitated, not yet completely come to terms with what was going on.

"S-Should we just-" I started, not sure what to do, but Zoil cut me off.

"Just take whatever you can carry and leave the rest! Clive, you still have the Black Vampire?" He moved about the room, grabbing bottles of water from the mini-refrigerator.

"Y-Yes?" Clive looked just as frightened and confused as I was.

"Get it. You might need it." Zoil held the door open for us as I grabbed a bag filled with toiletries and Clive went for his sword he kept in the closet. (It was the real sword this time, not just a replica.) We left the room with only a few things, but I didn't see Ruth or our son, Preston, in the hall. (Yes, I have a son; he wasn't planned, but I hardly regret that it happened. Of course it wasn't always easy, but it's always worth it no matter the hardships you face...)

I looked to Zoil as we started down the hall with two other security members. "What about Ruth?"

"I already had Karen take them to the bus. She'll look after them." Zoil reassured me as he ushered us all towards the stairs, making sure to send updates to Karen about our location through radios and vice versa. This wasn't happening... This couldn't be happening...

Yet I couldn't deny that it was, even as my panicked mind tried to make sense of what was happening. The thing that we feared the most when a higher intelligence reveals itself to us, the event that we were virtually defenseless against... invasion. No one said it, but we were all thinking it even as the power failed in the hotel. Good thing Zoil chose the stairs, even if we were on the third floor. All the years as a government agent must have helped him anticipate how bad the situation was and was going to become.

"It's an invasion..." Clive's frightened voice brought me back to reality, "They're either going to exterminate us or enslave us all!"

"I don't want to be enslaved!" I could already feel the panic starting to settle in. The thing is, I've never exactly been the most reliable person in these situations since I've been known to panic easily, which was why it was probably best that Ruth and Preston were with a separate security team lead by Karen. I'd more than likely have us all panicking as a result... Fear was, after all, an appropriate response to this and I was sure that there was pandemonium on the streets.

"Don't think or talk, just keep moving!" Zoil reminded us; he was probably aware that if we kept going that way, we wouldn't be much use to ourselves let alone anyone else.

I could hear people screaming and the sound of things breaking just outside the hotel as the knowledge that we were being invaded was becoming more apparent. Yet, even with all this chaos, I had to believe that somehow we would make it through this. A part of me knew I had to remain strong and keep hope alive or we were all doomed to die in this no matter how terrified I was. I even thought of Paul and how we had risked our lives to help him get home. I thought that maybe, just maybe, someone would come to help us too.

If there was some kind of intergalactic authority out there, surely they wouldn't let something like this go unjustified. I hoped that someone would come and help us set things right. If not Paul's species, then some other intelligent race with such capabilities...

I also hoped that wherever Paul was or whatever he was doing, that he was much better off than we were now...

 **(Disclaimer: I do not own Paul or any other characters created by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I do, however, own Dave, Lilith and Preston. Read and Review please!)  
**


	4. References and Discoveries

**Chapter 4: References and Discoveries  
**

 _-Paul-_

Something else that really sucks: waiting to die. I can't even really describe the feeling beyond saying that I was ready to shit bricks. We were prisoners in enemy territory without any weapons or any sort of knowledge of our exact location. No communication, not even a fucking window. We were stuck just waiting for them to decide what they wanted to do with us.

Who the fuck knew what they were planning to do with us? We destroyed their home planet and several of their colonies and almost wiped out their entire species. I could only imagine how fucking pissed off they were... I've had plenty of near-death experiences in my life and been in many situations where I was sure I was going to die, but this was different for me. All those other times, I at least had some sort of exit strategy, even on Earth.

It was just a matter of making it through to the part where I didn't have to worry about dying again. Here, there was no exit strategy. There were no means of escape, no rendezvous point where we'd be rescued. It was just these cells and whatever they had planned for us. It was like waiting on death row and like I mentioned before, it really fucking sucked.

We had absolutely no concept of time. A few weeks could've passed for all we knew and after a while it all just felt like hours anyway. It didn't seem long until they came to grab the kid again and take him somewhere else. I noticed that he didn't seem afraid of them despite knowing what they were capable of. In fact, he actually looked kind of annoyed that he had to be stuck here.

I couldn't blame him... This was bullshit.

I started to feel hungry and a little thirsty after a while, so I figured at least several hours had to have gone by since they abducted us. We also hadn't said anything to each other since learning that we were abducted by the Ulara. There really wasn't much to say other than to talk about what they might do with us, which was just depressing. The last thing we needed to be right now was depressed. So, I guess we were just silently thinking of anything that could possibly help us keep our fucking sanity at that point.

Over the next few minutes though, sanity would become a pretty loose term. I kept thinking about home, trying to use that to motivate myself to keep calm, when I heard the hiss of hydraulics as my cell door opened like an iris. Standing in the doorway was something I thought I'd only ever see in the pages of my people's history books. My eyes widened and I felt my heart skip several beats before it started pounding in my chest. For the first time since waking up in my cell, I tried my luck at standing while inching back away from the shadow that stretched across the floor, only to stumble and land on my side against the wall.

"Oh, fuck me..." Was the only comment I could make before my throat became too dry to say anything else. A tall, dark figure stepped into the cell, a long black segmented tail following him. From what I could see in the silhouette, he had long limbs and thick, shiny claws at the ends of his four fingers. His feet were less like actual feet and more like combat boots in their shape.

He had a large, oval shaped head that extended towards the back and he looked like he was wearing some kind of shiny body armor. He grinned at me as I kept trying to back away from him, his teeth a stark white contrast against the black of his exo-suit, long, sharp and looking like he had a mouth full of ceramic nails. Remember the movie Alien? Yeah, I helped out with that one too. They needed an alien species that looked terrifying and asked me if I could think of anything.

The Ularan exo-suits were the first things that popped into my head. Between the Xenomorphs in the movie and the exo-suits of the Ulara, there was hardly any difference. A few subtle differences were there, sure, the filmmakers had to tweak a few details to make the Xenomorphs something of their own design, but for the most part they pretty much looked identical. The only major difference was that the Ularan exo-suits pulled off a sort of fleshy, muscular look whereas the Xenomorphs had more of an insect-like appearance. The suits were built to be intimidating and function as both weapons and armor, and fuck did it have the desired effect.

I heard Del's cell door open and then heard him swearing in shock and fear just as I did moments before. As I heard another Ularan step into Del's cell, the one in front of me crouched down until his hand touched the floor in front of him. His tail arced above him and the end of it opened like a grappling hook. It struck out at me and I barely had the time to react before it hooked around almost my entire torso and flung me out of the cell. I landed hard on my left side and the wall that I bumped into was the only thing that broke my momentum.

Outside the cell was bright and I had to keep my eyes closed at first before they could adjust. I heard Del cry out until he was flung out here with me. I opened my eyes to see, but it was only shapes and shadows for the first few seconds as I tried to sit up. I heard what I guessed were the guards stepping out of the cells and the doors hiss shut. I looked around as my vision cleared, seeing that we were in an entire corridor of cells, each end of the corridor guarded by two Ulara in suits.

The cell doors were smooth and arched, the cracks that indicated where they opened swirled towards the center and extended outward. The interior of the corridor was reflective, a lot like a mirror, probably made from the same alloy that my people used to build ships. It wasn't surprising. We did trade with the Ulara before the war and that included building resources. Above each cell door were symbols that looked a lot like claw marks, most likely indicating the cell's number.

The corridor was lit up by a band of white light on the ceiling that ran the length of the entire area. Before I could make any other observations, I was roughly dragged to my feet by the arm. As the same was done to Del, the Ularan in front of me barked some kind of order at me in a language I wasn't very familiar with. It sounded like it was mostly made up of vowel sounds with a few consonants separating them. The suits made their voices sound deep and hollow, probably to mask what they really sounded like.

From what I could tell from his gestures, he wanted us to follow him. Since we were obviously in no position to argue, we simply did what was suggested. He lead us down the corridor to the first door, the other one behind Del. The doors to the corridors opened horizontally from the middle and were rectangular. As we passed through the first door, I could see another corridor of cells, but I noticed the curve in the structure along the walls.

This meant that the shape of at least this section of the building or station or wherever the fuck we were was circular or maybe even elliptical. Whatever, I'd learn more as I went along. I also noticed that in the middle of the corridor was a section that split off to the left, which was where we were headed apparently. Like the doors to the corridors, this door opened horizontally and was rectangular, but it looked heavier and had what looked like some sort of caution sign above it. When we passed through this door, there was another door just like it barely three feet in front of it.

It looked like we walked through some kind of airlock or antechamber or something before moving into a narrow hallway that lead to a transparent door at the other end. As we got closer to it, I figured it had to be an elevator since it opened to a small, circular room that could only hold maybe six people at a time. The Ularan in front of me pressed a blue button in the wall at my eye-line and the elevator door opened with a hiss of hydraulics. As we stepped in, the two escorting us stood at opposite sides of the elevator, leaving us to stand at the back. I watched as the one to the right tapped at a touchscreen on the wall on his side and the door closed again.

As the elevator moved, I glanced around at its details. (You just never know what might be useful to remember later.) It was a pale silver in color, the surface not reflective like the corridors of cells we just came from, and cylindrical in shape. Like everything else, it was smooth and lit up by a band of white light that formed a circle on the ceiling. The touchscreen that controlled the elevator was a small, blue rectangle just a foot above the top of my head.

Through the transparent door, I could see flashes of white light zooming past vertically as well as blurs of shapes and various colors. It was probably other floors we were passing and who knew just how big this place was. There was no elevator music, which I was thankful for, and after a few seconds it finally stopped, the door opening automatically. The Ularan to my right exited first, the other one shoving me ahead of him. I heard Del grumbling swear words behind me, telling me he was shoved ahead too.

Now, I'm guessing we had just come from the prison block, obviously because of the cells, but this place looked like the medical wing. It had the same alloy in the structure as the prison block with the same markings over each room, but the doors to these rooms were rectangular and one solid shape, a single square window towards the top. They opened by sliding apart at the middle and as we passed the open rooms I noticed examination tables and what appeared to be medical tools on trays inside. We were lead to a room that was about four doors down from the elevator. When I saw what was inside, I felt my stomach twist into a knot.

Ash was right... Seeing the exo-suits was one thing, but seeing what stood behind an examination table really hit home for me. These guys weren't imposters, they were the real deal. The Ulara weren't extinct, just an endangered species. I doubted I could've picked a worse time to be wrong and I fucking hated being wrong...

Ulara without their exo-suits look like taller versions of my people at first glance. Thin build, four long fingers, big heads and eyes, but there were subtle differences. This one at the examination table, for example, had pale, greyish skin and medium length, wispy blonde hair. His eyes were a sandy color and the rest was black instead of white like a human's and had a narrow face. His nose was more defined than mine or Del's, but not very noticeable and he had thin lips.

They were similar to us in a lot of ways, but they looked more human-like in appearance when I thought about it. Now that I really thought about it, it actually creeped me out. On the examination table was another Ularan, but I could tell it was dead. Its eyes were glazed over and empty, plus the fact that it was currently being autopsied was a big clue. The two that lead us here said something to get his attention and he responded without looking away from the body as he touched a needle-like tool to some navy blue headband device on its head while pointing to a corner of the room.

His voice wasn't hollow or deep like the ones in the suits, but tenor-based and had a trained professionalism in his tone. We were ushered to where he had pointed and I saw the fingers of the body twitching when he poked that headband with that needle.

"Creepy as fuck." I commented to Del who simply grunted in agreement. I noticed he wasn't really looking at the body, but I understood why. As much as he liked to study ranged weapons like guns and shit, he was a little squeamish around dead bodies. I don't like looking at them either, but I don't get nauseous or dizzy or whatever.

The Ularan glanced at me when he heard that, as if he knew what language I was speaking and was surprised that I knew it. He said something firmly to the two that escorted us here and pointed to the door of the room, telling them to leave I guess. They both hesitated before looking at us and then moved. One left the room while the other simply moved in front of the door, saying what sounded like some sort of rebuttal towards the Ularan across the room, folding his arms across his chest.

The other sighed and consented to his presence there before turning to us. He looked over the body that lay on the table before glancing at us, then shining the small light in its eyes.

"Where did you learn to speak English?" He asked, his attention on the body. It was my turn to be surprised. I just exchanged a glance with Del, who looked equally taken-aback. I wanted to ask the Ularan the same thing, but didn't say anything. When I didn't answer his question, he looked up from writing something down on the tablet.

"Where did you learn to speak that language?" He asked again more firmly. These assholes blew up our ships, abducted my people and even killed some of them, I didn't have to explain shit to him. So I kept silent, scowling at the floor. I could tell by his silence that Del was thinking along the same lines as me.

Fuck these dickwads... I only looked up to see him return his attention to the body, removing the shiny, navy blue headband thing from its head.

"Fine. You don't have to tell me. It's not exactly a common language found in the cosmos. In fact, there's only one place where you _can_ learn that language." I knew where he was going with this as he looked up at us. "You've been to Earth. You were there long enough to learn English. How you learned it or who taught you is irrelevant."

I came to the same conclusion about him and how he knew English. The Ulara had been to Earth and like he said, they were there long enough to learn English. I still chose not to say anything, letting the pieces come together in my head. The kid said they were the last of the Ulara and that they had planned on expanding. If they planned to do that, they needed to establish a base of operations on a planet similar enough to their home planet so that they could survive on it.

From what I could remember of their home planet, it was similar to Earth, very similar. They could definitely survive on that planet if they needed to, especially with those exo-suits. What I remember of their style of technology is that most of it was genetically based. Genetics was something they excelled in among other things. They planned on expanding...

Oh, shit...

If I was right, Earth was just as fucked as we were...

* * *

 _-Graeme-_

We were hiding in an alley among the rubbish, waiting for an opportunity to move ahead safely. It had been about a week or so since the invaders' initial attack in every major city across the globe. People panicked, looting or otherwise aimlessly running away, while others tried taking matters into their own hands only to die horribly. The military had been taking action ever since, but without much success. We were at a technological disadvantage considering our best ammunition couldn't even penetrate their defenses.

To make matters worse, the invaders who weren't subduing the military were abducting people off the streets or from their hiding places, doing who knows what to them. They were beginning to spread to neighboring cities and towns, even to less populated areas, so hiding was becoming increasingly difficult. We couldn't stay in one place for very long and had to constantly be on the move to keep from being captured or killed. It's what lead us to be crouching between bags of rubbish in an alley, watching people flee in terror and listening to gunfire and explosions a couple miles off.

Zoil and his wife, Karen were discussing our group's next move. Apparently, he knew of several government outposts in what was referred to as the Dust Bowl region designed to withstand possible invasions, from sources on Earth or elsewhere. I suppose I shouldn't have found it all that surprising really, all things considering, but I was grateful Zoil still knew of these potential resources. The difficult part was surviving long enough to get there; we were still trying to get out of California and we had lost many modes of transportation in all the chaos. Luckily, we were all still together though we did unfortunately lose a few of our security team to the invaders...

Zoil and his team kicked down the door of the building to our right while Karen's team took watch on either side of the alley. Zoil lead the way inside, brandishing a pistol he picked up a few days back, and cleared the immediate area with his team. Once they determined it was safe, one of the security team waved us inside and we wasted no time getting off the streets, Karen's team following last and making sure the door was secured behind us. I glanced around what appeared to be a musty cellar that looked as if no one had been down here for several years. There was a layer of dust on the wooden shelves and the cement floor and there wasn't much else here except an old freezer, some cardboard boxes and an old, rusty bicycle I assumed once had a color.

Zoil pulled a dusty, wooden table closer to the center of the room and pulled out the atlas of the US that we'd been using since the main highways and air traffic became inaccessible. He flipped through the pages until he found the map of California and examined it.

"Okay, we're still in Bakersfield, about a hundred miles or so from the border of Arizona." Zoil pointed at various locations on the map as he spoke, "We can cross the border at Needles, but with avoiding the major highways it'll take us several more days to get there, especially on foot."

"We can still follow Interstate 40 along the railroad." Karen suggested, "Right now, the invaders are focusing primarily on major cities and evacuation routes. If we lay low, the railroad running parallel to Interstate 40 should takes us directly to Needles."

"It's risky traveling that close to the interstate, but it's doable." Zoil considered and continued to go over strategies with us as I sat next to Ruth and Preston against the wall, the latter seemed to have been combating a cold for the past several days and he didn't seem to be improving much. When he coughed, he sounded terrible and we were hard pressed for medicine. One of the security team found a small bottle of painkillers on one of the shelves and tossed it to me.

"It's not much, but it could help." He said as I caught the bottle and thanked him. I took out a bottle of water I had stored in a shoulder bag and handed it to Preston.

"Here, Pres, take this." I dropped a small tablet into his hand and watched him carefully as he took it. I tried to comfort him as I rubbed his back, but worry consumed me, among other emotions. As Zoil finished up, he had his team blocking the windows with whatever they could find to keep anyone or anything spotting us.

"We should probably get some rest before we move on." I suggested, letting Preston lean against my side while Ruth pressed against the other.

"Right like anyone's gonna sleep in this." Clive remarked bitterly from my left, gesturing towards the windows. The whole invasion was taking a toll on him. It was taking a toll on all of us really, but Clive only had so much resolve in him whenever he was dealing with unfamiliar situations like this. To be honest, my resolve was beginning to unravel at the seams as well, but I knew I had to stay strong.

We just had to get through this. We couldn't let it get the better of us. We'd make it through and it wouldn't be the end. It couldn't be the end, not like this...

"Graeme's right." Zoil agreed, lighting an old lantern he found in one of the boxes and dimming the lights, "We'll take watches until dusk, then we'll keep moving under the cover of night. I'll take the first watch."

I nodded in understanding and put a hand on Clive's shoulder, speaking softly, "It'll be alright, sausage. We'll get through this."

Clive didn't look away from the ground at first, both his hands wringing his sword, "I know... It's not like we haven't had some practice."

He half-joked a bit dryly and I smiled comfortingly, hoping to keep our spirits up. I wrapped an arm around Preston and Ruth, giving the latter a warm kiss on her head. We quietly talked amongst ourselves until, little by little, we each fell into a light sleep. It seemed like barely any time at all had passed before I was awoken by the sound of something moving around the floor above us. I distinctly heard the sound of claws scraping against the ceiling and my heart started to race. Had they found us?

Zoil and his team were already on the move, quietly gathering what they could and motioning for me to get up and get the others moving.

"We need to move on," He whispered, "now and quietly."

 **(Disclaimer: I don't own Paul or any other characters created by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I do, however, own Del, the Ulara, Preston and Ash. Read and review please!)  
**


End file.
